A monkey that escaped a Conway animal clinic was recaptured Tuesday after it climbed up a police officer who spotted it in the street, perched on his shoulder and later followed the lawman back inside.
Joey, a macaque that was being boarded at Chestnut Animal Clinic while his owners were out of town, somehow got out about 7:30 p.m., setting off a rear door alarm in the process.
Officers responded to the alarm and soon spotted a small primate not typically native to the streets of downtown Conway.
"As I drove to the business, I observed a medium sized monkey near the Centennial Bank building at Chestnut and Deer Street," Officer Charles Waits wrote in an incident report. "The monkey fled the area toward Deer Street."
Additional police officers helped corner the monkey in parking lot near the back door of a nearby Centennial Bank. Then it approached one of them, "climbed up his arm and perched on his shoulder," the report said.
"Officer [Matthew] Edgmon walked to the door and as he got to the threshold the monkey got off his shoulder and walked to the door," Waits wrote. "It did not enter the Clinic so Officer Edgmon entered and the monkey followed ... A few minutes later, Officer Edgmon exited and informed Sgt. Dunn that he had been bitten by the monkey. The injury was minor and was on the knuckle of his right thumb."
Animal Control was later called in to sedate the monkey so it could be secured inside the facility.